Armenian Highlands as the Base of Society and Knowledge

Modern Armenia… A small state that connects Europe with Asia. Two millennia ago, it was considered one of the most powerful states in the Middle East commensurate with the Roman and Parthian Empires.

Scientific research, archaeological excavations, manuscripts, ancient maps, and even the Bible contain evidence that Armenia is the cradle of civilization.

In ancient times, the Sumerians and Egyptians believed that science and wisdom came to them from the Armenian Highlands. But mysteries faced by historians who now conduct research in Armenia are sometimes unresolvable even with the help of modern technologies.

So, back in the seventies of the last century in the territory of Eastern Armenia, archeologists discovered a statuette of a bird made of material previously unknown to scientists. It is more than three thousand years old. Not a single tool can even leave a scratch on that material.

But how could our distant ancestors create and process such striking materials? The whole course of history shows that the development of technology requires certain amount of time. How far do the origins of these amazing achievements go?

Today, the bird statuette is stored in the History Museum of Armenia in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. After closer study, scientists have determined that the composition of the material does not exist on Earth, moreover, it is not a part of a meteorite.

Along with the statuette, bits were discovered. The most surprising thing about them was that they didn’t get rusty despite the fact that they had been created long before iron.

These artifacts are not exhibited but stored in the storerooms. The reason is simple: there is not enough place for them. The museum exhibits a huge number of ancient finds, including weapons and vases of colored glass.

In the museum, there is also the world’s only footwear with age of almost six millennia. However, scientists do not know very much. The only thing they can do is describing the ancient artifacts.

Back in the twentieth century, many scholars began to talk about the fact that the so-called “historical period” was in fact much longer than previously thought.

On the basis of astronomical, mythological, and other indirect evidence, the assumption arose that the first civilizations were established during ice ages. Science was not in a hurry to agree with these arguments, but at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the situation changed.

It turned out that archaeologists indeed made a sensational discovery: the first civilization arose not in the valley of the Nile but in the Armenian Highlands twelve thousand years ago.

It was here that agriculture, livestock, and textiles were born. And from there, the art of processing metal and architecture spread. New centers of civilizations were established, including the Sumer and Egypt.

The term “Armenian Highlands” as the definition of the region where Eastern and Western Armenia is located was first introduced by the German scientist Otto Wilhelm Hermann von Abich, but today, historians often avoid ethnic names out of political correctness.

Many amazing discoveries were made in the territory of Western Armenia, today’s Turkey, where the Armenian population lived until the Armenian Genocide in 1915. Here is the famous mountain Portasar, which means “Potbelly Hill”. And it sounds very symbolic.

Archaeological excavations around this mountain have revolutionized our view of the ancient Neolithic not only of the Middle East but whole Eurasia in general. Here for more than twenty years, excavations were conducted under the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt.

It was here that civilization was born, becoming the basis for the stratification of the subsequent society. At Portasar, Schmidt discovered a whole temple complex assembled from ancient processed megaliths and related to a period when, in our opinion, a man was primitive and engaged in hunting only.

But, as it turned out, here, on the Armenian Plateau, twelve thousand years ago, temples were built of processed stone, which is twice as old as the Egyptian pyramids.

According to some scientists, agriculture, settled lifestyle, and civilization originated in this place, in the center of which is Mount Portasar or Göbekli Tepe, as it is called by the Turks.

Today, the temples of Portasar are the oldest religious buildings in the world the construction of which began in the Mesolithic era and lasted several millennia. In the oldest layers dating back at the eleventh millennium BC, a round building constructed of unprocessed monolithic stones of up to three meters of height was found. The floors of the building were made of processed limestone.

People living at the time at Portasar were not just good hunters. They also had good organization of social life. In their society, a hierarchy should have existed because there was division of labor and there were specialists, for example, stone cutters and builders.

Portasar in the Armenian Highlands might be the most sensational find of the last centuries more significant than the excavation of Troy or the discovery of Stonehenge.

Today, there are only four temples with a diameter of up to fifty meters found there. According to geophysicists, there are sixteen similar structures in the subsoil of Portasar.

It is already possible to say with certainty that agricultural crops from Portasar were later used in Mesopotamia along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and in a large area including Syria, Turkey, and Northern Iraq.

In 200 kilometers from the capital of Armenia at an altitude of more than 1700 meters is an ancient monument comprised of upright-standing stones with perforating holes at their tops. Karahunj or Zorats Karer, as it is called, is similar to Stonehenge, but is significantly older.

Scientists have found that the outlines of Karahunj resemble the constellation of the Griffin (Cygnus constellation in ancient Sumer and Armenia). But how did people have somewhat modern astronomical knowledge in ancient times?

In European and American universities, lectures on the elongation of the known history of mankind have been given for several years. In the textbooks of Cambridge and Oxford Universities, maps show how civilization moved from the Armenian Highland to the Middle East and Egypt.

But what made that civilization leave their place of living? Researchers believe that this was caused by global climate changes, which resulted in prolonged droughts.

In the tenth millennium BC, representatives of the culture of Portasar covered their structures with soil and went to the south in search of glacier-free lands to be able to survive and preserve their society. They reached Sinai, the Red Sea, and the eastern shores of the Persian Gulf, completing their journey.

Striking as it may seem, this is how the famous American clairvoyant Edgar Cayce described and dated the events of distant antiquity. Back in the thirties of the last century long before the discovery of Portasar, Casey claimed that civilization originated in the eleventh millennium BC.

It should be noted that the resettlement of ancient people of Armenian Highlands was not limited to the Middle East. The Anglo-Saxon chronicles compiled in the ninth century and kept in the British Historical Museum state that the first inhabitants of the island of Britain were the Britons, who came from Armenia.

The culture that came from the Armenian Upland lived in a vast territory, the borders of which are not yet known today. Every year, new monuments and facts are discovered, territories are being expanded, and ideas are enriched.

Many riddles come from the past. Neither Armenian nor many foreign researchers have been able to unravel the mystery of the material from which the found artifact, the statuette of a bird, was made. Today, it is studied by a large group of Japanese scientists. Who knows, maybe they can find the answer. Even so, new questions will arise for scientists to answer again and again.

Well, that is the process of cognition, which is infinite like history itself.